5 Ways Your SEO Strategy Is Hurting You

SEO is an ongoing process that has to be regularly updated and monitored. Providing effective SEO services requires consistency, patience, and continuous learning. Google is always evolving and improving. They use SEO as a measurement for websites that are optimized for the best user experience. Proper execution of SEO can send your business to the top page on Google. However, poor SEO implementation could actually execute your digital marketing strategy all together. So, which one are you? Are you executing an effective strategy or are you damaging your traffic, sales, and ROI?

#1 A Poor Website Design

A website that is not developed correctly to allow for optimal Google “bot crawling” and easy visitor engagement is going to reduce conversions and increase bounce rate. Google bots will notice if your website structure is not optimally organized, if your navigation is poor, or if your content is lacking. Furthermore, your users will also notice and choose a competitor’s website that provides a better user experience.

Your website should be:

Well-Defined in Page Structure

When someone visits your site they don’t want to have to labor through big blocks of texts. Bullet points, smaller paragraphs, and headers help break content down into manageable pieces and quickly convey a page’s message. You need to provide your user specific, fleshed out details. Also, each landing page should be optimized with a different, primary keyword so you can track growth and conversions.

Easy to Navigate

Someone who visits your website should be able to quickly figure out who you are and what services you provide. If they’re searching for something specific, the visitor shouldn’t have to fish for what they need.

Organized with a Clear Menu

A clear menu goes hand in hand with easy navigation. The menu should be specific and user-friendly.

HTML Friendly

Bots read HTML. Clean code is the basis of an SEO-friendly site; without it, no matter what fancy tricks you throw into it, search engines will never see it. A page audit will determine any broken code or links that bots are not able to read and index.

Fast-Loading

Slow loading speed will ultimately frustrate users and lower your rankings. If your page is moving slow, resizing your images is a good first step to increase your website’s speed—our Atlanta SEO Company has aour Atlanta SEO Company has a comprehensive list of other factors that could slow your website speed.

#2 Not Using the Correct Keywords

Irrelevant Keywords

Keywords are the bread and butter of SEO. Proper keyword research lies at the heart of a successful digital marketing campaign.

Your selection of keyword phrases should be targeted to the correct kind of traffic that goes through your website – web traffic that converts into paying customers. If you use the wrong set of keywords, you’ll only attract traffic that will not contribute to your business’s bottom line. It’s imperative that you are using keywords that are being searched for most in your industry and location.

For example, if you’re a dentist and you’re ranking number one on Google for “Beats by Dr. Dre” that is not going to help your conversions, sales, or traffic. Users searching for “Beats by Dr. Dre” want the headphones, not teeth cleaning—a keyword a dentist should be trying to rank for instead. “Beats by Dr. Dre” has nothing to do with dentistry. So even if you’re number one on Google for “Beats by Dr. Dre” it doesn’t do anything for your business to rank for that particular keyword and in fact will increase your bounce rate.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to rank for “teeth cleaning” and you use it every other sentence on a page, that’s called keyword stuffing. Google is too sophisticated to fall for keyword stuffing, and will penalize your website with a lower ranking if you try to exploit the algorithm. The algorithm itself is designed for a better overall user experience and recognizes that keyword stuffing is going to cheapen that experience.

Even if you ‘get away’ with keyword stuffing, the effects will only see short term benefits. Eventually, keyword stuffing can drive your audience away if they feel they are being bombarded constantly with a sales pitch or if your content doesn’t make any sense as a result.

For example:

Are you looking for cheap teeth cleaning in the Sandy Springs, GA area? Cheap teeth cleaning in Sandy Springs, GA is an important part of the overall health of your teeth. Our cheap teeth cleaning in Sandy Springs, GA is the best teeth cleaning in Sandy Springs, GA experience you will get. . . . you get the idea.

So how do you get the most of out of your keywords? Here are the simple steps:

Make Sure to Use Keywords:

In your page URL

As an H1 title tag – at the start of your content

In 2-3 H2 tags within your content

In your meta description

In a closing paragraph – at the end of your content

#3 Lacking or Misusing Links

You don’t want your audience constantly jumping off your web page. However, an element of good SEO is having both internal and external links within your text.

External Links: Adding trustworthy and informative external links to your pages will help improve the credibility of your website. An external link is more valuable if it links to a popular (highly-ranked) and relevant (related to the content on your page) web page. Valuable external links will also help to improve the authority of your website, by providing a viewer with references. However, if you’re using external links that are low ranking or have little credibility, they could actually hurt your SEO rankings.

Two things you need to consider:

Are you using external links to help support your landing page/blog?

Are the external links you’re using reliable, high ranking, and valuable?

Internal Links: Your website’s visibility and rank on a search engine can be improved by adding internal links. The anchor text should be a specific and descriptive group of words that will help a search engine bot to better crawl your web page. Internal links will help a bot find other web pages on your site, too. A web page that is easy to navigate — for users and search engine bots alike — will properly index. Without internal links your website might be difficult to navigate.

Backlinks: Backlinks remain an important Google ranking factor, but over the years, Google has learned to weed out the bad links from the good. More links will still result in a higher score, but only if they’re from a number of diverse and authoritative domains.

Toxic Backlinks could undo all of the hard work you put into your SEO. Spam websites, unindexed websites, and websites containing malware are just a few in an exhaustive list of toxic backlinks that could affect your ranking on the SERPs.

#4 No Blog

There are no excuses, no matter what your industry, company, or customer base, to not have a blog. The more frequently your content is updated, the more likely (and often) Google will update your website pages’ cache. A blog can offer you the opportunity to pump fresh, new content onto your website frequently, with amazing results. A blog will also attract new visitors and help with engagement.

In addition, when keywords are frequently used in new content, more traffic will be driven to your website. You can use internal links to direct users to landing pages and the contact form. Without a blog, you don’t have the opportunity to optimize your website on a regular basis.

#5 Not Mobile Responsive

With over 60% of website users accessing sites from a mobile device, not being mobile responsive can cause huge problems. But what about being mobile-friendly?

Mobile Responsive: A mobile responsive website conforms to provide optimal use across any device. These sites are dynamic and dependent on the device’s mobile operations system for functionality; navigation, images and spacing are optimized to provide users the best ease of use on any device.

Mobile-Friendly: A mobile friendly website is designed to be static. It looks the same from desktop to laptop, and tablet to cell phone. The problem is with each smaller screen, the function, navigation and features become more limited.

Let AIS Media Solve Your SEO Case

Do you think you’re committing these SEO crimes? Does your website have a bad rep? Let AIS Media solve your SEO crimes and get you back on the right track. Our SEO Company will keep the record straight.